Page 93 of Stay Buried

“Get out!” he barked, teeth gritted, a vein on his forehead pulsing. “And you keep your mouth shut, little girl.”

Mini fled.

THIRTY-SEVENASHLEY

October 18, 2016

We’re all the knackerman.

Ashley replayed Sad Willy’s words as she followed the path back to town and came out near the bridge by the factory. She couldn’t shake the sense that she was being followed. She was sure she heard footsteps behind her, twigs snapping, leaves crunching. But when she stopped and turned, there was nothing there. She was happy to be out of the woods, back in civilization, such as it was.

She felt a little tipsy from drinking bourbon on an empty stomach and told herself that it was affecting her judgment, making her imagine things, turn normal forest sounds into menacing footsteps. But nothing about this town felt normal.

She made her way up Main Street along the sidewalk and crossed it when she saw the Boone’s Ferry Public Library sign on a low brick building with a lot of windows. She got to the front door to find it chained and padlocked with a hand-painted sign that said:CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE.

“You have to be kidding,” Ashley mumbled. So much for doing research and getting online.

She peered into the dark windows, sure she saw movement.

But the movement wasn’t coming from inside.

It was the reflection of someone standing behind her, across the street: a figure she recognized.

Her mother in her long camel-hair coat.

It struck her then: her mother wasn’t gone at all; she had been here, hiding in Boone’s Ferry the whole time, waiting for Ashley to come find her.

Listen.

Ashley knew it was impossible, a bourbon-induced fantasy, but she couldn’t shake the thought as she stood frozen, facing the library, watching her mother’s reflection in the glass.

She was watching Ashley, her head cocked to the side ever so slightly, just the way she always did when she was thinking hard about something.

Ashley hadn’t been imagining things: it wasn’t mice and squirrels she’d heard in the woods—her mother had been following her all morning. It was her mother snapping twigs and crunching leaves under her feet.

Could ghosts make a sound?

Did they have weight?

Ashley spun around, bracing herself for the possibility that there would be no one there. But the womanwasthere. Before Ashley could get a good look at her face, she turned abruptly and began hurrying down the street.

“Wait!” Ashley called after her. “Please!”

The woman walked faster, head down, pretending not to hear Ashley calling her.

Ashley rushed across the street to follow. Down the block, she saw the woman slip through the door of Loon’s Call. A moment later,Ashley was opening the door to the pub, heart hammering as she scanned the dim bar for the woman—or was she a hallucination, a ghost, a wish?

Maybe they don’t ever really leave us, Sad Willy had said.

Ashley blinked stupidly in the darkness of the bar, taking in the smells of beer and greasy food, the country music playing low. The taxidermied creatures and the little clothespin dolls lined up on a shelf behind the bar were watching.

Ashley nearly cried out when she saw the figure, sitting at a table near the end of the bar, her back to the door.

Ashley approached her from behind, reached out, laid a hand on her shoulder.

She was real. An actual solid person.

Only this wasn’t a camel-hair coat, but a worn canvas barn jacket.